Happy First Day of School! I had a chance to visit each of our schools today and I am excited to report that we are off to a great start! There will be some adjustments made over the first week or so, and with a number of new bus runs, the pickup and drop off times will tighten up. However, the weather is perfect for the first day and the forecast looks great for our students over the next week or so, adding to the high energy levels in our schools today. Now that our students are back in our buildings and the academic year underway, I wanted to take this opportunity to inform our school community of certain security enhancements and initiatives premiering this year. Since the unspeakable tragedy at Sandy Hook, our district has continually worked to enhance our safety and security measures. This year we are introducing a number of new initiatives. Some of these initiatives – like our adoption of an anonymous reporting app – will be obvious to the community while others might be more subtle, but all initiatives support one very important goal: prioritizing the physical and emotional safety of our students and staff. See It, Say It, Send It Anonymous Reporting App In recent years the use of anonymous reporting apps has grown exponentially for the purpose of providing another method to report safety concerns at the earliest possible moment. Madison Public Schools has adopted the See It, Say It, Send It anonymous reporting app for the district. This app gives students – and the entire school community – another tool to quickly and anonymously report safety concerns. To download the app, click here. To learn more about the app, visit our website and read through the FAQs. Two Campuses, Two Student Resource Officers (SRO) With the recent physical contraction of the district, we now have a dedicated SRO at each campus: one for the Green Hill Road campus and one for the Route 79 north campus. Unlike prior years, each campus will now have one dedicated SRO on the premises for the entire school day for the full school year. Advanced Lockdown and Safety Protocols – "ALICE" Training Law enforcement experts continually work to improve and modernize response protocols to violent threats. The current recommended response protocol is called the ALICE approach, an acronym that represents five different responses to violent threats. The administrative team was trained in this approach this summer and the entire MPS faculty and staff will be trained over the course of this school year. DHHS Campus Shield PAL Program This summer we have installed infrastructure and cabling to implement a system called, "Campus Shield", a pilot program at DHHS that will premier this September. With this technology, each staff member is assigned a "PAL", which is a personal alarm locater. The PAL operates under radio frequency – the most reliable communication system - and functions as a personal 911 that will only be used in case of emergency. |